Bill Maher Says He Speaks for the ‘Vast Middle’

Despite butting heads with virtually everyone appearing on HBO’s Real Time and his Club Random podcast, Bill Maher insisted to CBS Sunday Morning that the majority of people are in sync with his idiosyncratic views. “I speak for the normies,” Maher said, using a term normal people never would. “You know, I speak from that, I think, vast middle that is tired of the partisanship. I don’t want to hate half the country, and I don’t hate half the country."

How do we know Bill Maher is a man of the people? He proves his nonpartisanship by finding something wrong with everyone. In his new book, What This Comedian Says Will Shock You, Maher admits that he finds the left irritating and frustrating. “But the right often alarms you?” asked CBS’ Robert Costa.

“Yes, they’re very alarming!" Maher told America. “They’re extremely alarming. More alarming.”

Maher’s new book is actually a rehash of old material, pulling together dated bits of sermonizing from Real Time and rewriting them when his version of the truth has shifted. “I wanted to see if the world had changed or I had changed more,” Maher explained. A thorough review of his past work led Maher to conclude that his opinion represents Everyman. Heck, maybe even Donald Trump’s. 

“I don’t think (Trump) really hates me,” Maher told CBS, a direct contradiction to what he told CNN’s Jake Tapper last year. “I am afraid of Trump on a very personal level,” he quivered a few months back. “I thought I could wind up in Guantánamo Bay. I think I still could.”

It wouldn’t be a Maher appearance without a warning about cancel culture. CBS Sunday Morning aired one choice clip from Real Time with a somber Maher warning: “The right response to speech you don't like is more speech, not the lazy, cowardly response of ‘canceling’ people.” Maher’s campaign must be working. Even though he told Bill Burr this week that he could be canceled at any moment, Maher continues to speak his mind on national television without restriction, just like he always does. 

The ultimate way that Maher knows that he speaks for all of us? It’s his canny skill to make a studio audience laugh and think at the same time. “The great thing about laughter is that it’s involuntary, so if you laugh at something, something in you tells you that’s true. It must be true; I laughed at it! Maybe I wasn't supposed to.”

Memo to Maher: There are lots of kinds of laughs. A laugh of recognition when you reveal a hidden truth? Sure, that’s one of the best kinds. But there are also the laughs that say, Can you believe the bullshit that’s coming out of this guy’s big yapper? 

Bill, you might be getting a few more of those than you realize.